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Family Separation at the Border: US citizens are now being detained

Family Separation at the Border: UN & Laura Bush condemn policy

It took less than a day of real traction for the Dems to overdo it to the point of fake news. Jeesh, just let the news cycle play itself without spin. Someone needs to duct tape
Y’all to a chair Josh Lyman style.
 
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palma babbles nonsense.........otherwise known as Monday.
 
John McCain

Verified account

@SenJohnMcCain


The administration’s current family separation policy is an affront to the decency of the American people, and contrary to principles and values upon which our nation was founded. The administration has the power to rescind this policy. It should do so now.
 
palma, this is below you.

Report the story and let it spin itself. The sooner you go to anyone who doesn’t agree is a subhuman immoral piece of shit take, the sooner the story just becomes more partisan and eventually ignored.
 
Great comment in there suggesting the administration believes girls and toddlers are sympathetic but their base sees little boys as future MS-13 gang members.
 
Fairly crazy to use this news to learn about what’s going on in El Salvador. What’s the solution to their obvious asylum claims when 10% of their country is gang affiliated?

If we start letting everyone in who claims that then given the Information Age within a decade or two you bring in half their citizens.

At the same time I don’t value an American life any higher than an El Salvadoran life
 
Fairly crazy to use this news to learn about what’s going on in El Salvador. What’s the solution to their obvious asylum claims when 10% of their country is gang affiliated?

If we start letting everyone in who claims that then given the Information Age within a decade or two you bring in half their citizens.

At the same time I don’t value an American life any higher than an El Salvadoran life

The reality is that in the information age, failed states create repercussions not just for their direct neighbors but for entire huge sections of the world. The answer is some combination of much stronger regional blocks that can check failed states earlier in the process, foreign investment to stablize markets and raise quality of living in those at risk areas and more streamlined support for refugees and asylum seekers throughout the path with joint distribution of resettlement region wide (i.e - El Salvador fails and there's a refugee wave ... they can apply for asylum in neighboring areas and those countries work with the larger regional powers including the USA and maybe Brazil, etc to resettle them continent wide).

There are already central american agreements designed to help the smaller states from failing (SICA is basically a mini version of the EU with more limited centralization and then the C-4 subset of that as well) but they are generally underfunded and have never truly stabilized.
 
Report the story and let it spin itself. The sooner you go to anyone who doesn’t agree is a subhuman immoral piece of shit take, the sooner the story just becomes more partisan and eventually ignored.

But isn't this is so awful that anyone who supports it or justifies it is a subhuman immoral piece of shit?
 
Family Separation at the Border: UN & Laura Bush condemn policy

Back up to the low 40s

That’s because enforcing our border makes sense to a lot of people. I think the media/outrage is off on this one to be honest. I don’t support our current strategy but it doesn’t surprise me that this action makes sense to a lot of Americans.

I was listening to Michael Smerconish yesterday and the discussion made a lot of sense. MS basically made the point that Trump isn’t creating a new law, he is simply enforcing a law that no other president had the brass to enforce (this is obviously debatable based on your partisan stance). MS really doesn’t like Trump, and I respect his opinion a lot. He was actually putting the responsibility on the parents who are entering the country ‘illegally’ (not through the standard immigrant process). He also made a strong point that we need to streamline our immigration process.

Personally, I feel there has to be a better way to handle this, but in my opinion, Trumps actions are the culmination of years/decades of politicians not being willing to tackle this issue. He isn’t tackling the issue in the manner I would prefer, but I think Trumps actions are playing a lot better in middle America and I don’t think it is because those people are racist, heartless people. I think it is because they are glad to see that someone is at least trying to put a dent in our illegal immigration problem. That is the vibe I got from Smerconish‘ show And his callers (which if you follow him, you know is not partisan in either direction).

I have seen so many tweets and articles about how if you don’t overtly condemn the action then you are immoral. It seems very similar to pro-life friends of mine who write off anyone who is pro-choice. The unwillingness to engage on the topic is unfruitful. Morality arguments don’t work. They simply make people feel self righteous. I think those of us who range from uncomfortable to appalled with the admins interpretation of the enforcement of our border laws to make arguments based on merit, and not on moral high ground.

I am not opposed to a deterrent model of enforcement, but believe we are going way too far in our current set up. We are not willing to spend the money to truly be humanitarian and tough, so we are choosing tough. We are better than that as a country. I don’t blame the families attempting to enter our country illegally, but I also don’t blame our country for wanting to protect its borders.

We need comprehensive immigration and border reform now. Make it easy for good people to enter legally, make it more difficult for them to enter illegally. Trump is trying to force the hand of congress. Perhaps the republicans and democrats will get together and get something done (). Who knows, but it is past the time that we should have completed some true reform. No one has the stones to make it happen I guess.
 
Family Separation at the Border: UN & Laura Bush condemn policy

Wrangor, Trump is choosing to enforce the law in a way that separates families. He could just deport them together in the spirit of the law but he isn’t.
 
Morality arguments should work. People, especially those who claim to be Christian, should know that this is morally repugnant and evil. This is basic do unto others stuff. The fact that they don't tells me they are not good, moral people and are not good Christians. And we know that a lot of them are just racist pieces of shit.

The idea that we could or have to reason with these people on the merits of not separating children from their parents on grounds other than simple morality is ridiculous.
 
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That’s because enforcing our border makes sense to a lot of people. I think the media/outrage is off on this one to be honest. I don’t support our current strategy but it doesn’t surprise me that this action makes sense to a lot of Americans.

I was listening to Michael Smerconish yesterday and the discussion made a lot of sense. MS basically made the point that Trump isn’t creating a new law, he is simply enforcing a law that no other president had the brass to enforce (this is obviously debatable based on your partisan stance). MS really doesn’t like Trump, and I respect his opinion a lot. He was actually putting the responsibility on the parents who are entering the country ‘illegally’ (not through the standard immigrant process). He also made a strong point that we need to streamline our immigration process.

Personally, I feel there has to be a better way to handle this, but in my opinion, Trumps actions are the culmination of years/decades of politicians not being willing to tackle this issue. He isn’t tackling the issue in the manner I would prefer, but I think Trumps actions are playing a lot better in middle America and I don’t think it is because those people are racist, heartless people. I think it is because they are glad to see that someone is at least trying to put a dent in our illegal immigration problem. That is the vibe I got from Smerconish‘ show And his callers (which if you follow him, you know is not partisan in either direction).

I have seen so many tweets and articles about how if you don’t overtly condemn the action then you are immoral. It seems very similar to pro-life friends of mine who write off anyone who is pro-choice. The unwillingness to engage on the topic is unfruitful. Morality arguments don’t work. They simply make people feel self righteous. I think those of us who range from uncomfortable to appalled with the admins interpretation of the enforcement of our border laws to make arguments based on merit, and not on moral high ground.

I am not opposed to a deterrent model of enforcement, but believe we are going way too far in our current set up. We are not willing to spend the money to truly be humanitarian and tough, so we are choosing tough. We are better than that as a country. I don’t blame the families attempting to enter our country illegally, but I also don’t blame our country for wanting to protect its borders.

We need comprehensive immigration and border reform now. Make it easy for good people to enter legally, make it more difficult for them to enter illegally. Trump is trying to force the hand of congress. Perhaps the republicans and democrats will get together and get something done (). Who knows, but it is past the time that we should have completed some true reform. No one has the stones to make it happen I guess.

There's a lot here to respond to and I will try to come back later, but two quick things.

1. While I agree with you that there are other arguments that could be used than moral ones with certain subsets of the population, I think it's shocking to a lot of people that you would need to go beyond the moral in this case. This isn't really a gray area. Using threats to little kids as deterrents, hostages, or bargain chips in negotiations, kidnapping them under the guise of "giving them a bath,"-- these things are morally abhorrent. There's an element of "how could you NOT think that way" that makes other arguments difficult to consider. Especially since this was a decision made by this administration that could be rescinded instantly. There is no law that requires this.

2. Where is the evidence that illegal immigration is a real problem that requires such drastic measures? It's not crime (despite the Trump racist fearmongering), because immigrants commit fewer crimes than natives do. It's not the economy: economists largely agree that MORE immigration, not less, would be the best thing economically, and the data don't support the "they're taking your jobs" rhetoric.

To be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't try for reform. And we could argue about what exactly that would look like. But jeez, can't we all agree that the travesty at our borders this administration has caused isn't the answer?
 
That’s because enforcing our border makes sense to a lot of people. I think the media/outrage is off on this one to be honest. I don’t support our current strategy but it doesn’t surprise me that this action makes sense to a lot of Americans.

I was listening to Michael Smerconish yesterday and the discussion made a lot of sense. MS basically made the point that Trump isn’t creating a new law, he is simply enforcing a law that no other president had the brass to enforce (this is obviously debatable based on your partisan stance). MS really doesn’t like Trump, and I respect his opinion a lot. He was actually putting the responsibility on the parents who are entering the country ‘illegally’ (not through the standard immigrant process). He also made a strong point that we need to streamline our immigration process.

Personally, I feel there has to be a better way to handle this, but in my opinion, Trumps actions are the culmination of years/decades of politicians not being willing to tackle this issue. He isn’t tackling the issue in the manner I would prefer, but I think Trumps actions are playing a lot better in middle America and I don’t think it is because those people are racist, heartless people. I think it is because they are glad to see that someone is at least trying to put a dent in our illegal immigration problem. That is the vibe I got from Smerconish‘ show And his callers (which if you follow him, you know is not partisan in either direction).

I have seen so many tweets and articles about how if you don’t overtly condemn the action then you are immoral. It seems very similar to pro-life friends of mine who write off anyone who is pro-choice. The unwillingness to engage on the topic is unfruitful. Morality arguments don’t work. They simply make people feel self righteous. I think those of us who range from uncomfortable to appalled with the admins interpretation of the enforcement of our border laws to make arguments based on merit, and not on moral high ground.

I am not opposed to a deterrent model of enforcement, but believe we are going way too far in our current set up. We are not willing to spend the money to truly be humanitarian and tough, so we are choosing tough. We are better than that as a country. I don’t blame the families attempting to enter our country illegally, but I also don’t blame our country for wanting to protect its borders.

We need comprehensive immigration and border reform now. Make it easy for good people to enter legally, make it more difficult for them to enter illegally. Trump is trying to force the hand of congress. Perhaps the republicans and democrats will get together and get something done (). Who knows, but it is past the time that we should have completed some true reform. No one has the stones to make it happen I guess.

I like Wrangor. I enjoy his basketball posts and find them knowledgeable. I disagree with him seriously on this post. There are a number of points to make but I'll just go with one here: the bolded sentence is ironic because by and large, people in Middle America are much less likely to be impacted by illegal immigration than in other areas.
 
There’s so much floating around out there that it’s hard to nail down precisely what is happening and the outrage level that should correspond.

First to eliminate the whataboutism it seems past administrations separated children from parents when they believed the child was in danger and not as a specific policy, if this is not true then regardless the tactic was not being pushed and the numbers were not nearly as large with even more immigration occurring, finally it’s not now so talking about it doesn’t really do anything.

Next are the children being separated from those seeking asylum or just those crossing the border illegally? If it’s the first it’s a lot worse than the second, if it’s both it’s bad, and I guess the last option is the best of the bad scenarios. If it’s just the last is it because catch and release ended meaning you are held till you are deported so children can’t be held with their parents? It seems if you are holding people and for the most part their only true crime is border crossing than these “camps” could easily be family size. Also Ted Cruz legislation isn’t the worst if all that’s really needed is for expedition of hearings, I don’t think we need more border security, just a better way of dealing with the backlog we have now. If more judges equals faster hearings and families stay together then I think that’s an acceptable compromise.

With all that said to bring up morality, these are people not animals, many fleeing violence and other horrible things to find a better life. There only crime is wanting that better life and being born on the North American continent so close to the richest nation. The children have no say in what their parents do and are being used and punished by a manipulative shit administration. If all the other actions they have done don’t scream counter to fake Christianity they tote this one tops the list.
 
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